Welcome to “Your Homestead Journey”. Our desire is to be a place where we can connect and share our individual homestead journies. Homesteading is rewarding, difficult but also fun. And we want to be apart of your journey.
It’s nice to meet you!
My name is Courtney and I love living in the country and trying my hand at all the homesteading things. I grew up out here and moved to the city for a few years after I got married. The city is not for me. I feel so suffocated there. The country feels like home and I feel like a can breath here.
Growing up my mom loved gardening and animals and we had chickens, sheep, cows, a dog, and cats. I helped out a neighbor on a regular basis and they had horses, pigs, and cows. I was pretty involved growing up and would help my mom. We also would help our friends butcher their meat birds each year. (I will spare you the pictures from that)
Now that I am married and I have a family of my own we are working on our little homestead. For now, we only have a few acres but its perfect because it is what we can handle at this point in life. We would love to have more land someday but for now, this is great practice. And my parents have a lot more land so anything that we can’t do on our land we try on their land.
I know homesteading looks different for everyone and some people want to be 100% self-sufficient and that is awesome! But as a mom with 4 young kids who home schools, I don’t see that as a possibility right now. So we do our best to try new things and continue to do as much for ourselves that we can.
I will say that doing things for yourself is so very rewarding. I love working with my hands and seeing what I can make of it. Here are a few things we do on our homestead.
Canning
I love to can. This is chicken broth that I made and canned. (here is how I do it)
But I can all sorts of stuff. We love homemade salsa, tomato sauce, jams, Etc. Canning might seem like a lot of work but once you start to do it you find it really goes fast. For example, I was able to can all the salsa we need for a whole year in one day!
Harvest our own meat
I personally don’t take the time to hunt but the rest of my family does and that provides enough for us. My husband hunts deer and rabbit mostly. We also raise chicken for meat. The rest of our meat needs we trade with local farmers.
Gardening
I love to garden! I find it very relaxing to work in my garden. Here is a picture of my daughter bringing in some of our produce.
I love that my kids are learning how to grow their own food!
Fermenting/Kombucha
We love fermenting things. We have tried pickles, carrots Etc. But our favorite thing to make and consume is kombucha. It is so easy and such a great beverage to aid in good gut health. We are always trying new flavors. Our newest favorite flavor is watermelon!
Poultry
We currently have chickens and Quails. With a household of growing kids, we fly threw the eggs. So having our own egg layers is a must.
Our kids love to play with the chickens, take care of them and collect the eggs.
Homeschooling
This is the most important part of homesteading to me. I have for kids and I believe that it is my job to train and raise them. My husband and I want to raise our kids into adults who will bring something to society and that can fend for themselves. We want them to be strong men and women and to be able to think outside the box.
My husband and I see great benefits in homeschooling and would love for you to know why we think the way we do. If you want to know more you can go to our post here.
The End…
For now!
I could keep going on about all the things we love and do on our homestead but If I do that there will be no reason to keep writing new content. It is never the end around here. We are always adding new things and always looking forward to what we can add next, what we can learn about Etc.
We hope you stick around and that we can be apart of “Your Homestead Journey”.